The ocean has long stirred dark fascinations and fears in humans. Its vast, little-known depths and murderous storms seem to harbor a cold indifference to mortals. And nowhere does the sea challenge mankind more than when it pushes us to the edges of survival.
Stranded alone on a boat for months, no land in sight, food gone – would you resort to the unthinkable to see another day? Would you try to bargain with forces beyond your understanding? Seafaring history is full of such taboos and rituals born from confronting the worst circumstances imaginable. And they often reveal uncomfortable truths about human nature when morality hangs by a thread.
"Who Shall We Eat?" – Customs of the Extreme
While rare, there are many documented cases over centuries of sailors and passengers trapped at sea without provisions who have resorted to cannibalism. Shipwrecked, adrift for weeks or months, some groups made the decision to slaughter and consume someone in order to feed the rest.
One of the most accurate accounts comes from the ill-fated whaleship Essex out of Nantucket, inspiration for the novel Moby-Dick. After being attacked and sunk by a massive sperm whale in 1820 in the South Pacific, the 20 man crew escaped in three small whaleboats with limited supplies. They attempted to sail the nearly 4,000 miles back to South America, but provisions soon ran out.
After weeks debating the idea and seeing some men already dead from starvation or drinking seawater, they came to the conclusion that without sustenance none would survive the journey. According to first mate Owen Chase, two sailors named Charles Ramsdell and Owen Coffin, the young cousin of Chase, made a pact that they would be the ones to sacrifice their bodies to feed the remaining crew. The drawing of lots was a way for seamen to let fate decide an uncertain outcome. In this case, it was the only way these civilized Christian men could justify such an act outside the bounds of acceptable behavior.
The lots fell to Owen Coffin, who was shot and eaten over the ensuing days so the others might reach land. This excruciating custom was the last resort for desperate men who saw cannibalism as the only slim hope against certain death adrift on the endless sea.
A Legacy of Suffering and Sacrifice
The harrowing travails of the Essex crew were far from the only documented instance of shipwrecked groups resorting to cannibalism. Roving the oceans of the 15th-19th centuries during the Age of Sail, vessels were often at the mercy of storms, navigation errors, piracy, and automotive failure. Thousands met their end lost at sea in wrecks and strandings.
While most sailors perished quickly in maritime disasters, some survived in small boats and on rafts for weeks and months, slowly travelling hundreds or thousands of miles with no provisions beyond what they escaped with. As all food was consumed and men grew too weak for rowing, a grim calculus took form – without sustenance, all would certainly die. But by sacrificing one member of their party, the rest could subsist long enough to make landfall. This reluctant anthropophagy was viewed as the only slight chance in the face of overwhelming odds stacked towards death by exposure.
Famed cases include the wreck of the French frigate Méduse in 1816. After hitting a reef off the coast of modern Mauritania, about 150 survivors escaped on a hastily built raft, only for it to break apart less than two weeks later. When rescued 15 days after the wreck, just 15 men were still alive. It was later reported that some men were killed and eaten by the others. Similarly, when the English brig Francis Spaight ran aground in 1836, the escaped crew in lifeboats turned to cannibalism by drawing lots in the same manner as the Essex. After 39 days, only 14 of the original 31 were rescued, 10 having been consumed. Over 20 years later in 1856, the captain and 5 others of the English bark Hannah Nicholson were rescued following 16 days adrift in the North Atlantic. They admitted to subsisting on 2 of the crew they were able to recover after the wreck.
More recently in 1972, a plane carrying an Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes mountains. Trapped without supplies for 72 days in freezing conditions, some who died in the crash or to exposure were eaten by those who remained. Resorted to reluctantly for survival, the anthropophagic acts in these cases and possible hundreds more remain mostly unspoken; uneasy memories of victims sacrificed and comrades consumed when stranded between merciless nature and the last shreds of human morality.
The Moral Dilemmas of Survival Cannibalism
The decision to engage in anthropophagy at sea provokes profound ethical questions. Is cannibalism ever acceptable even under mortal constraints? Or is it one of the ultimate moral taboos that should never be countenanced? Philosophers and ethicists have framed the tensions and justification for survival cannibalism through various frameworks.
Utilitarianism suggests that actions should be judged by their consequences; the choice that maximizes overall welfare is viewed as morally correct. In dire survival situations, cannibalism can be defended along utilitarian lines – consuming part of a deceased victim or mortally weakened member of the group allows the others to potentially reach safety, saving more total lives. It produces better outcomes overall in a clearly constrained circumstance. Critics counter that there are still categorical prohibitions against crimes like murder that override even perceived benefits. They also posit that utilitarian thinking can justify almost any abhorrent acts and lead down a dangerous moral path.
Cultural relativism notes that ethical standards differ by culture, circumstance, and need. Actions viewed as taboo or criminal in some societies may be accepted or normalized in others. Therfore, situational cannibalism that offends elsewhere cannot be universally condemned without context. Critics highlight this thinking‘s issues with making judgments, as any act no matter how offensive could be excused if some culture permits it. There must be transcendent standards to prevent anarchy.
Social contract theory suggests people implicitly agree to cooperate and restrict freedoms for mutual benefits and protections. But in broken situations like being stranded, normal contracts dissolve and new emergent ones oriented towards survival take primacy. As long as victims for cannibalism are selected fairly and without malice, it can be justified. Critics argue there are higher divine covenants or absolute moral codes that hold regardless.
The tensions between upholding civilized taboos and confronting violent animal impulses speaks to the core drama of the human condition. Stranding episodes peel back the moral calculus to its starkest – who deserves to live versus die, and what nightmares can be permissible when living hungers? The sea forces men to confront the primal calculus of survival stripped of comforting illusion. Driven to impossible extremes, men become capable of nightmarish things for the sake of just seeing another dawn.
Bargains With the Unknown
In addition to physical sustenance, the unknown perils of sea travel also drove sailors and passengers throughout history to turn to ritual magic and mystic symbols for comfort and control when rationality failed them.
Feeling entirely at the mercy of deadly storms, unfamiliar routes, and a featureless oblivion that could entomb them forever, seamen were known to be an especially superstitious lot. Whistling on deck could stir up fresh gales, remnants of past victims clenched in Davy Jones‘ Locker below. Charms, tattoos, and tokens were common to ward against misfortune. Forbidden words and dire omens had to be countered quickly before calamity struck.
Maritime scholar Paul Lee notes the psychological backdrop for sailor rituals: "The featurelessness of the sea increases anxiousness and the perpetual danger leads seafarers to search out rituals for comfort and control." He adds that, "…these men endure a profound ‘lack of agency‘ that sees mystics fill voids where reason and will fail." The sea‘s dangers and enforced passivity feed sailors‘ needs to construct magical buffers against helplessness.
Beliefs in witchcraft and mystic symbols date back to some of the earliest seafaring cultures. Ancient Mediterranean and Norse sailors used charms, curses and incantations believed to hex enemies or prompt favorable weather. Chinese shipmen performed Taoist and Buddhist rituals for safe journeys like sea goddess Mazu. Even strict Protestant English mariners were known to nail horseshoes and magic talismans to their vessels‘ basements.
Right up into the modern 20th century, sailing crews engaged in spiritualism to sooth anxieties. The case highlighted of a homemade Ouija board on a freighter in 1924 that seemed to accurately provide clues beyond the crew‘s knowledge to help solve a murder is one profound example. Here is evidence that even in an age of growing rationality, atmospheric terror and nautical myth could seize hold.
There are reports that some survivors of shipwrecks and forced anthropophagy struggled with lasting trauma and spiritual impacts from crossing forbidden bounds. After the wreck of the Francis Spaight and the consumed crew members, men reported being "haunted by the specters of brothers they had eaten." The presence of ghosts and apparitions reflect the lingering disturbance of such taboos violated and prices paid to endure.
What the Sea Makes Men Do
While such taboos transgress ethics most embrace on dry land, they take on a terrible logic when death is the only other option. In those luckless moments stranded on endless ocean, unmoored from society and its comforting normality, the sea forces men to confront the primal calculus of survival.
When a sailor holds his own flickering life and that of his mates equally dear, the moral codes and sanity of civilization can blur. Driven to impossible extremes, men become capable of nightmarish things for the sake of just seeing another dawn peek across the abyssal waters.
Though stomach-turning and tragic, these cases teach about the fragility of human decency, the primal urges that still stalk our modern veneer, and the savagery men can revert to when there seems no other choice. Light and dark are twins, and the sea shows us morality indeed has limits even in the best of us. Mad charms, ghosts, and cannibal rites; judging such desperate resorts calls for solemn wisdom even from far-flung shores.
For until one is trapped boiling beneath merciless sun and stygian nights on an endless plain of oblivion, the sea keeps her deepest secrets of human truth. We rightfully comfort ourselves that such dire acts are relics of the past, safely banished from modern ships with GPS, emergency beacons and reliable bulk shipping routes.
Yet still the empty horizon taunts us; serene in her sublime indifference and daring us to press fate braving the bounds where maps fade and compasses fail. To challenge her is to wager more than wealth or glory, but perhaps also the very essence of our souls. Of this intrepid captains and green deckhands alike take heed, or invite her dark hospitality onto voyages from which they may never return whole again.